Illinois Railway Museum Blog

A great deal has been going on in the steam shop while I have been travelling to the UK.  Thanks to Collin, Phil, Jim and Eric for series of updates on which this update is based.

Obviously most activity is focused on 1630 and getting her ready for a steam test

·         In the cab:

Last weekend the firehole casting was fitted to the backhead

Fire hole casting in place

Collin had put in a lot of work during the week to fit lagging blocks on the backhead;

On 10/5/13 Rick, Vince & Collin mudded the backhead of the cab. The mudding on the 5th centered on filling in the holes, so to speak. Approximately 10-12 buckets of mud were hauled into the cab and applied.

Collin applies insulating mud

After having mudded the backhead the group then began the process of fitting the sheet metal which is akin to assembling a jig saw puzzle. First, the individual pieces are attached to the backhead, then the radius pieces which overlap both the backhead and wrapper sheet pieces, tying everything together.

Fitting sheet metal to the backhead

At the end of the day the mudding was largely complete and all backhead pieces were in place. Additionally, several pieces of radius corner sheet pieces had been fitted.  This shows what was achieved when compared to the first picture.

Main sheets now in place on the backhead

At this point we await the completion of some pipe fitting work on the pressure pipe leading from the steam chests to a gauge in the cab. Upon completion of that fitting the remainder of the sheet metal in the cab will be finished.

·         On the boiler barrel

Eric "the crew chief" had his team working on fitting the sheet metal over the boiler courses so the front course is now covered.

Further lagging blocks were fitted so that the lagging is extending steadily toward the firebox.

Jerry has been filling the gaps with insulating mud to complete each ring.

First ring of sheet metal in place

·         Tom has finished work on the throttle and this is now ready to refit, hopefully in the coming weekend.

·         Work has continued on the air pump.  The seats of the various valves are being cleaned and lapped to ensure efficient operation.

Valve seat lapping on the air pump

·         As noted last week, Dennis has been cutting the numerous pieces of plate work for the smokebox.  Each new piece is copied from and matched to the original so that the "jigsaw" will fit together in the smokebox.

Cutting the new plate work

The tricky part is that the copy cannot be exact!.  The comparison between new and old shows why replacement is necessary.  So the trick is that the copy must match the old where it is complete but also be designed to replace the metal that is no longer there!

New versus old

In other areas:

·         A good deal of effort went in to enabling the move of locomotives from the steam lead area.

As mentioned last week we had the great pleasure of finding out that a TV show may be filmed here at IRM.  Or it was a pleasure until we as discovered that they wanted to film on the steam leads, which of course means all of our equipment on the steam leads has to be move.  So, we were then faced with the ever "amazingly fun" task of lubricating all of our equipment...   ALL OF IT.

So, the day began with checking our supply of oil and grease that we have. Ralph, Cameron, Brian, and Phil worked on lubricating the equipment out on the leads. Ralph, Cameron, and I took machine oil and went around to all of the engines and lubricated all of the rods.

A lot of equipment to move

The reason for all of the work is that equipment that is seldom moved suffers from the weather and the bearings would be damaged if it is simply moved as it is with rain water as a lubricant !..

Water - not what you want in a journal box

Suck out the water

Brian and Cameron pump in new oil

Ready to move

A long line of steam on the main line

Brian took a soft grease gun and applied it to all the soft grease points. Then we checked the levels our journal box oil and discovered it to be empty. Tom had ordered a 55 gallon drum but it has not arrived yet. So, we went to the car department and they let us have some of theirs. Joel from the car department set up a new barrel for us and helped us fill up our cans. A big thank you to Joel for doing that. We were able to put car oil into most of the Journal boxes. I think Cameron came in on Sunday and finished up all of the boxes.

·         Bob has continued working on the planer.  It is now substantially painted and a filter has been fitted to enable the hydraulics to be activated

A lot of progress on the planer

So a lot has been achieved and I hope to see it at first hand this Saturday, when I get back to the shop.

Nigel